You can totally trademark things used in everyday speech, like Apple, as long as it's limited to a market, and not already a generic term within that field.

http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/appletmlist.html -- there are a lot of common words like apple, aqua, carbon, cocoa and time machine in there with no modifier. Dell can't jump into the market and sell an "Apple" laptop by just not calling it an "Apple computer".

GW's bullying here is almost certainly because of the title of the book. They probably can't successfully argue that they own the idea of space marines or the term, but they have a fair chance at demonstrating that a book with "Space Marines" in the title confuses people, as the only other such non-GW books are from the 1930s and not available on Amazon. If they want to be aggressive jerks about they could claim that the author was intentionally trying to ride on their success.

At this point it's just an Amazon takedown, though, so someone would have to take it to court before any actual claims are made.

Armengar wrote on Feb 7, 2013, 10:50:trademark =/= copyright. GW are attempting to assert that space marines in books are pretty much their space marines. The same way apple trademark their logo etc. It makes no difference if there is prior art (starship troopers etc) as that trademark will have expired unless maintained. If maintained then it can last forever.

Its a shit move by GW but it is one they will win if they can show continuation over other claimants.

The prior art/use and the term being generic should have been enough to block being granted a Trademark. Normally things that are used in very day speech can't be trademarked. You can make variations to trademark things like Apple Computers but not the word Apple.

trademark =/= copyright. GW are attempting to assert that space marines in books are pretty much their space marines. The same way apple trademark their logo etc. It makes no difference if there is prior art (starship troopers etc) as that trademark will have expired unless maintained. If maintained then it can last forever.

Its a shit move by GW but it is one they will win if they can show continuation over other claimants.

Space Marine is such a generic term and one that would have likely been independently created many times. Militaries around the world have Marines or the equivalent thereof and extrapolating the future would suggest we would have them in space.

Is their problem with calling them "Space Marines" or the description and depiction of them. If its just vaguaries what is to stop Superman owners from going after every series that implement the equivalent super hero. what about the Tolkien estate going after any one that has a high fantasy series dealing with elves or a magical ring.

I can see a problem if it was using very specific elements of the lore.